


Crossing the Desert (and finding you there)

by MistressAkira



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Male Character, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Just you wait - Freeform, M/M, Mushy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Relationship, Requited Love, Unrequited Love, angst and hurt and fluff, everyone headcannons that's their thing so that's gonna be their thing, hand kisses in excessive amounts, my faves always bleed the most, oh my god thats all this series will be, playing in the rain, this was supposed to be cute and happy, varying degrees of success?, wow cue the sad fest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-04-24 21:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14364141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressAkira/pseuds/MistressAkira
Summary: It is no small feat, considering the terms of which they met. But they’d crossed that desert together, crossed most of the continent together, and reached the other side stronger than they had been before.---A collection of one-shots revolving around the relationship between the Heir of Light and the Black Knight. All chapters are self contained and are rated and tagged separately.Most Recent: they made you a god, i made you weak; prompt: realization, time





	1. For Whom You Bleed For (Rated: T)

**Author's Note:**

> WOW OKAY HERE WE ARE.
> 
> So uh, after the last Seliph/Ares fic I wrote (and still not being brave enough to go back and tackle the long multiple-chapter Seliph/Ares fic I’ve been working on for over a year now), I decided I’m gonna write a bunch of one-shots with them.
> 
> Some are based on prompts, others will be asks (uhhh request a thing if you want/care), and most are just random ideas that popped into my head; some will be fluffy, others (many) angsty, a few smutty… just whatever I feel like doing. All chapters will be rated separately (and I’ll list them in the chapter title) as well as any content warnings/NSFWs or whatever (don’t worry there will be like barely any of that probably).
> 
> Can’t say how regularly this will be updated (since everything is effectively a self-contained one-shot) but it will go on indefinitely as long as I have ideas I want to write about? So, uh… enjoy?
> 
> Prompt (oldie but a goodie): One of them gets hurt and is comforted by the other.

War was hell, and battle chaotic, and the ability to have all eyes everywhere at all times was a feat only capable by some and perfected by even less. Word traveled slow across the torn seams of battle on the best of days. And, more often than not, too slow to have made a difference.

That had been the case on this particular day.

By the time word of Seliph’s injury had reached Ares, he was clear on the other side of the battlefield and had to waste precious time cleaving his way back across in order to return to his prince’s side. His horse’s reigns were all but thrown into the closest pair of hands once he’d reached their encampment and dismounted, stalking through the frantic post-battle bustle in strides as long as his legs could facilitate without breaking into a full-blown sprint.

The entire time his heart beat madly in his chest, throwing itself against his ribcage with erratic abandon, his mind a tempest of thoughts, feelings, and fears he knew wouldn’t abate until he saw him breathing with his own two eyes. The storm crescendoed with a painful burst once the beige bump of the healers’ tent came into view, and if there was any measure for the ferocity with what Ares tore open the flaps was, it would have been called desperation.

Upon first glance, the scene before him spoke of no immediate fatality. Seliph was sitting upright in a raised cot with his back against the leather backing, looking pale and blue and effervescent as always, the golden light let in by the opening a loving caress on his elfin features; and his head had snapped responsively in Ares’ direction once he’d all but hurtled into the tent with the brutality of a war horse.

But then the finer details began to emerge, and Ares’ blood ran deathly cold: the pallor of Seliph’s face not that of his moon white skin but rather due to the contrast of the purple bruises that marred it; a splint that encased his left arm from the elbow down; the spools of bandages that bound every inch of Seliph’s visible flesh together and the heaps of those discarded on the low table beside the cot sodden and darkened by the vitality of crusaders. The cloying smoky smell of healing magic hung in the air and beneath that, the metallic stench of swords clashing and bones breaking. Of blood.

Ares’ heart felt bare and unprotected looking at him like this. Like his ribs had been pried open and everything he’d ever held between them ripped free and tossed upon the floor, to lurch and bleed for anyone to see.

He knew Seliph saw. He couldn’t bear it.

He threw the tent flaps aside, charging through the space separating them as if he even endeavored to dash the air that dared to lay in between to nothingness, but only got half-way there before remembering himself. He then abruptly turned back to refasten the tent closed. The cords were long and complex as fate, and it took several tries to get them to correlate properly, Ares muttering curses of increasing savagery under his breath throughout the entire process. Seliph, for everything Ares had ever criticized him with, watched patiently all the while.

Once he’d strangled the tent ties into submission, Ares spun around and resumed his brisk stride to Seliph’s bedside, all but smashing his knees into the ground with the rate he collapsed at once he had. Seliph’s bright smiled rewarded him, and with the tent all but sutured closed, Ares felt brave enough to cup his face with a gentle hand that belied none of the fury surging within him.

“What were you thinking?”

The blue prince sighed, bringing the hand of the arm not splinted to his chest up to rest atop Ares’ slim fingers, far too cold for Ares’ liking.

“This is the part when you tell me how I can’t do anything by myself. That it’s impossible to leave me alone for even a mere moment’s time.”

The mildness of his tone was perturbing, resignation plain on his features. Seliph had folded his other hand demurely into his lap, but rather than looking repentant, Ares saw it for what it really was: a rare show of petulance. He’d even crossed his legs at the ankle as well. It was the closest thing to throwing a tantrum Ares had ever seen from him.

“Why in the gods’ names would I say that?” Ares snapped back, too frustrated to be amused by this. Something within him felt dangerously fragile at this moment, something fragile and fierce and somehow the only thing upholding his entire being. The cavern that was left in the wake of Ares’ internal organs’ evacuation to the floor was seizing around that delicate thing and Ares was quickly losing his grip on his finer vindications.

He pressed his thumb into the indentation below Seliph’s thin bottom lip, and bit out with barely masked frustration, “I will not repeat myself again. _What_ were you thinking _?_ ”

Seliph raised his chin proudly. “That I could hold the line on my own.”

“And _why_ were you on your own?” Ares demanded, the frustration in his voice decidedly less masked.

A flash of hurt ran through Seliph’s eyes. “Leif had to help Nanna, and then Ulster needed healing and Larcei had to get him away and I just thought…” he trailed off, voice soft but hardening as he shook his head and finished, “That it was something my father would do.”

And just like that, the wrath was sapped from Ares’ blood.

The feeling left in its wake was asymmetrical. Love, a spiked and tender thing, present as always, and concern, underlying and attentive and as much a reflex as breathing at this point. But terror had retired, panic withdrawing shamefully to the corner Ares banished it to when it broke free, and anger…

He wasn’t angry with Seliph, and never had been- but he indeed was angry _at_ him.

So very little good was left in this world, without those possessing it intent on throwing themselves to the wolves in the attempt to feed the remnants of whatever kindness slept comatose in the hearts of the masses. But no good deed went unpunished. Seliph’s current state attested to that.

Ares traced his thumb up the sweet curve of Seliph’s jaw, dancing over the mottled pains of his lover’s bruises. Seliph breathed in calmly through his nose, serene expression clear and hard as crystal. That gaze had always been a force to be reckoned with, the kind that stripped the observer bare and compliant.

He could command Ares’ hand away, but he didn’t. And that made Ares yet braver still to hook his fingers behind Seliph’s ear, angling his face so that they were at eye-level, nose to nose and breaths entangled.

“We all would follow you anywhere. Lay down our lives and take any blow for you. But if you insist on blindly charging in like a fool, you may one day end up going where none of us can follow. There are few doubts to your capability, but don’t overestimate yourself. If you died, all of this would have been pointless. I won’t even bother to ask if that is what you want, because I know it isn’t.”

The rhythm of Seliph’s breathing didn’t change, but the firmness in his gaze had liquified. His brows upturned, living breathing pain in place of his formerly crystalline expression. It was the look of the kindhearted boy peeking from behind his warrior father’s silhouette, the light and hope that he bled rising to the surface and reclaiming his body his own.

Seliph had always upheld that sons were not their fathers. _Luckily for them._ But the need to _be_ Sigurd had always been the crack in that belief; that he seemed to feel that the world needed another Sigurd, that _Seliph_ wasn’t enough.

It was something Ares had always tried to reinforce the falseness of. People had bled enough in Sigurd’s name.

To bleed for Seliph was the ultimate privilege. To bleed for him was to bleed for life itself.

It was for him Ares was bleeding so shamefully bare now. And that tiny, fragile thing that so dutifully held him up when his body failed to contain the way Seliph made him feel: the savage emotion called hope. It was what Seliph instilled with him. Forced him to accept it in the act of loving him.

Ares would no sooner let it go than he would the boy who put it there.

“You uphold yourself to a standard that ultimately failed, and you compare yourself to a man you are not and will never will be. The people here fight for themselves just as much as for you. So, let us fight. Don’t throw your life away, because we are not throwing our lives away for you. We are living for you.” Ares shook him lightly, stroking his cheek. “We couldn’t function without you. To even try to picture it is abysmal. It would be a disaster. Oiphey can’t even manage that horrid mustache of his on a good day. Shanan is jaded, and I still hardly trust Leif with cooking, let alone anything resembling military command.”

A smile flickered to life on Seliph’s face at that. He chuckled, turning his head and pressing a warm kiss to the palm of Ares’ hand as if to placate his nerves. “Leif’s a fine leader. As good as, if not better, than I. And don’t poke fun at Oiphey’s mustache,” Serene and adoring as a deer, his eyes cut to Ares’ under his long eyelashes, smiling another kiss against his fingers. “He is so fond of it.”

Any further comment on the disparity of their alternative choices in leadership dies in Ares’ throat. His heart still laid on the floor, his lungs and most of his guts joining it in a bloody tangle of love Ares wanted desperately to stop hemorrhaging but knew he never would until the day he died.

He swallowed the lump he hadn’t felt form in his throat, griping tighter to Seliph’s shoulder as if the motion of it would tighten the slipping grip he had on himself. “Don’t let this happen again. I won’t repeat this. We shall not abide by it.”

These are the words he chokes out, but it is what he says in place of the words he can never get to leave his throat.

_I couldn’t stand to lose you._

Seliph blinked his lovely blue gaze into the palm of Ares’ hand, pressing his face into it the way a shy animal leans into the touch of a trusted companion. He then sighed, a full body exercise in surrender, and withdrew his face from Ares’ touch in order to look at him evenly.

“You are right. I am terrible at forgiving myself, but there are some things I simply must.” He sighed again, but this time it was lighter, the sound of one finding themselves absolved of a deep grief. “I must use this failure as a learning experience. And an excuse to further refine my skills as a soldier and leader. I never want to put either of us- _any_ of us- in a position such as this again. You have my promise- it will not.”

He reached out and took Ares’ hand in his again, squeezing the callouses and bruises and cuts they shared together until neither hand is Seliph or Ares’ but rather the hands are just simply _theirs._

“And you have my promise… that I shall try to never again be the cause of such pain, Ares.” He finished in a whisper.

It is a promise that threatens to drag those six little words lodged in Ares’ throat out, kicking and screaming, into the dimmed afternoon world of the tent. And it is a promise he immediately wants him to take back.

In some way or another, Ares will always end up bleeding for Seliph. Taking a hit meant for him, or simply wanting him to smile when he did anything but that, Ares had incurred the fatal wound known as love and there was nothing he could ever do that would be as gratifying as shedding his holy blood in the Scion of Light’s name.

But there is nothing he can say, nothing his mouth is capable of saying at this moment, so all Ares can do is rise up from the ground and come to sit beside Seliph on the bed.

He won’t kiss him, not yet, not here. Not when someone still might walk in and see the carnage Ares had left. His body that still barely holds hope is yet incapable of holding all Seliph can make him feel. But he does squeeze his hand with what he hoped was every emotion he’d never been able to convey in words.

And Seliph knows. It is what makes it bearable.

“I should go find Nanna. She’ll take good care of you.”

“I’d rather you stay with me a little longer. Say you will, my lord Ares?”

“I say I will… I will not leave you.”

_As there is a part of you that will not ever leave me._


	2. Two Hands (Rated T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: First Kiss (and what comes after)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow, would you look at that, I managed to write another one. And it’s more angst. Imagine that.
> 
> This was supposed to only be 2000 words but nah. Also this has been edited to hell and back I’m done looking at this.
> 
> Prompt: First Kiss (and what comes after)

It happened.

It’d really happened.

The timing had been, quite frankly, horrendous, and the setting less than ideal. But after the torturous build up of nearly two years, the fact it came to fruition at all left Seliph feeling lighter than air and simultaneously like all his internal organs had popped.

The moon had been so full and so bright it’s presence had felt physical, an observer that watched as in the meager shade of a tree quite literally where anyone else could have seen, Seliph told Ares of a scouting mission he was placing him as leader on that would leave him in enemy territory for six days. And in an uncharacteristic act of amity, Ares had stolen Seliph by the shoulders to his chest into the harshest and most heartfelt embrace of his life.

Seliph had frozen, unable to trust his own autonomy upon finding himself in the position he had longed and feared for since before he knew what it was he was longing and fearing for, and then Ares was closing the distance between them and everything that watched and anything that held them apart burned away.

Ares held Seliph’s shoulders in a grip like death as their lips met but a single time, the sensation fast and heated and tinged with regret. His lips were chapped and he didn’t taste like anything, and there was nothing gentle in the frantic way Ares crushed them together, noses bumping and teeth clicking, but he opens his mouth and Seliph can no longer think and they are everything and but one single pulse.

And then it was over too quickly. Ares pulled away and their kiss ended.

There was no second kiss to affirm what had just happened. No passionate third or anything beyond.

They simply stood there, huffing the air between them like it was all they would ever have, foreheads pressed together. The air there is heavy, equal parts tension and the weight of relief, sweet as the night but bitter as forbidden fruit.

They share a moment of silence for what had just occurred. For the line they’d crossed. It wouldn’t occur to Seliph until later how severe of a moment this passing had been.

_“You can’t die.”_

It was all Seliph was capable of choking out once the silence had lapsed. Not when the other three words dancing on the tip of his tongue sounded too raw, too much and too little for this moment and would’ve mean nothing if Seliph had said them instead and Ares didn’t heed the words he did speak.

Ares had huffed a breath of dry laughter, chest expanding and seizing against Seliph’s. Their hips aligned, ribs intertwined, Seliph had felt every breath he drew and heard all the pain that it clearly caused him to say through a cracking voice,

_“For you? Never.”_

That had been last night.

And now it was morning, early enough that the sky is still swept lavender and bruised plum, but late enough that Ares has already left with his squadron. Seliph had paid him one last visit at his tent before he departed, and they’d ran over the last-minute details about the mission, speaking in whispers as if the words they traded were meant only for them. And when they were done and they stood there once again in a silence somber as the sunrise, Ares had raised a hand to Seliph’s cheek and caressed it, brilliant green gaze refusing to meet his.

There was an unspoken agreement to the moment; whatever this might mean and whatever it might be, they won’t talk about it. Not until they’ve both had time to think. Not until Ares got back.

The rest of the Liberation Army would be staying put for the next six days, awaiting the return of the scouting party. And they will be the longest six days of Seliph’s life.

* * *

 

The lack of motion gives him too much time to think.

He pours over maps, cleans his silver sword and all his armor twice before noon, cannot choke down even the barest of bread crusts, and obsesses far, far too much over what could have been his last moments with the man he was fairly certain he’d been in love with since he was sixteen.

It is no surprise that the kiss is what fills his thoughts the most. The meeting of their lips had been hurried, harsh, fraught with all the fury and desperation and passion with what Ares did anything with. He’s become well-tempered in the flames of Ares’ fury over the years, but the heat of his _body_ was something so entirely new that had Seliph feeling partially liquified simply remembering it. And desire to have it again.

But the kiss itself seemed almost insignificant when compared to the emotional ramifications of the act. 

That within some capacity, Ares cared for Seliph. In the same way Seliph cared for him. In the way Seliph had resigned himself to never having a man care for him back.

The realization is both an illusion and something far too real, the thing one dreams about in the existential resolution that it will never come to be and a reality so heavy and so full Seliph’s heart threatened to buckle under the weight of it.

It is no small feat, considering the terms of which they’d met. But they had crossed that desert together, crossed most of the continent together, and reached the other side stronger than they had been before.

It’s astounding, remembering the very exact moment when he knew he cared for Ares and knew in turn that Ares hated him with a vengeance black, all-consuming and over a decade seeded deep within his soul. Seliph had never blamed Ares for feeling that way, but all it had made him want to do was take Ares’ face within his hands and beg the question he’d always feared to ask but already knew the answer to, and that scared him more:

 _You’ve never really_ _felt loved, have you?_

Perhaps if he had been brave enough to ask, he would have taken the plunge sooner, showed him what it could be like to feel this way, rather than quietly waiting and watching and hurting for years because he couldn’t bear to hurt him more if he said or did the wrong thing.

But that was what Seliph had always done. Keeping his feelings quiet when they suited no one but himself, holding them in one hand and his father’s sword in the other, speaking firmly, feeling quietly; this was how he had faced the world for fifteen years. It is the severity of this feeling now, this aching, fierce, heavy sensation that he can no longer contain with only one hand that shatters the careful balance he had struck within himself.

And the realization that there was no going back from this.

Seliph could carry this feeling himself, even if it meant sacrificing both hands to bear this single thing he had allowed to grow so large it consumed him.

Or, he could reach out. Ask the question. Place Ares’ hand within his own and shoulder this together.

But if he did, Seliph’s world would never be quiet again, no walls to buffer the sound, no deserts between them. Ares was all or nothing. He would fill every crevice, bust down every door, smash through every safety measure Seliph had and apologize for none of it. But for all his bluster, Ares was not invulnerable. He was not something to be played with. Raw emotion and untempered faith, he could shatter in even the steadiest of hands.

And Seliph would never be able to forgive himself if he broke him the moment he got the chance to hold him.

He remembered the way Ares’ body seemed to seize when it held itself against his own, the rapid pulse of his heart and the dread in his fractured voice as he spoke those three words as if they were a death sentence. But he had said them anyway, and it stills some of the mercury in Seliph’s emotions.

They would not be able to stay in this in-between for long after he returned, not when Ares demanded answers before questions were even posed. And they would never be able to return to the night when Ares overstepped the boundary that had upheld their friendship and Seliph’s resolve for nearly two years.

It may have been simpler before, but had it been easier to hide the way he felt for him from everyone, from even himself, lest the sword be ripped from his hand and he fall upon it without its weight to balance the halves of himself? But what point was there in pretending he didn’t feel the way he did now?

There is no definite answer. There are but two options. To resume their relationship as it was, and deal with their feelings as they must.

Or to commit to the fact they both wanted this. And be ready to accept the consequences of that.

And it is frightening how possible both options seem.

* * *

 

The first three days are a spiral in and out of control. Everything seems so quiet now that Seliph’s emotions have found their voice, and they are deafening.

The last three are an exercise in patience. As soon as the scouting party returns, the Liberation army will need to move immediately. Planning for that is substantive and time-consuming. It’s a welcome distraction from the monotony of existential dread, and the opportunity to do something constructive for the others helps to ease the storm of Seliph’s conscience.

But just like that, six days had gone by. And Ares returned.

The sun had long gone down by the time they ride into camp, the moon dim and laughing but the night faithful to her rider, delivering the Black Knight and their comrades back to them unharmed and unfollowed. He rode directly up to Seliph, and when they lock gazes for the first time in a week, there is a resolve in Ares’ eyes that strengthens the parts of Seliph that had been worn down with the resolution of the coming burden.

Without breaking eye contact, Ares announced, “We have returned.”

There must be a debriefing before anything else can occur. Seliph conducts it with command and grace completely at odds with the frantic lurch of his heart. His hands shake but hold firm, and each time he locks eyes with Ares across the room, it strengthens his will to persevere.

In what could have been minutes, but felt like hours, the meeting is over, and everyone has left the room except for them and the silence is resounding.

Ares stood resolutely in the center of the room, uncharacteristically quiet, eyes fixed upon Seliph’s. Seliph was still sitting behind the war table, maps and quills and ink and notes and his discarded gloves spread about the surface, a collage of the past six days and what Seliph had done to try and fill them without him here.

It feels like a stalemate, Ares quiet and patient for once when all Seliph wanted was for him to break the lull between them that has persisted despite just having spent the past hour talking about everything but what they needed to.

And then it hits him, the realization a lightning bolt through Seliph’s mind. This was his moment to dictate. That Ares had crossed the first line, and now stood on the other side, waiting for Seliph to close his hand or join him there. The space between them one last desert to cross.

To brave it was be to brave enough to open the hand Seliph had kept clenched around these feelings for years. To use these hands to raise Ares up instead of breaking him. To accept that Ares felt the same, even if it endangered them both to emotions they were not well versed in yet, even if they were both broken at the end of it.

But how would he ever live with himself if he never even tried?

Seliph rose slowly from his seat, breathing in measured gulps to keep them steady, using all his resolve to remain patient long enough to walk around the table that separated them. But all the resolve in the world wouldn’t have stopped Seliph from falling in love with him and it wouldn’t have stopped him then from all but crashing into Ares’ arms once he had reached the other side.

The embrace that met him there was where the sand met the sea, the desert ending and the rest of the world beginning. And then that embrace became an entangle, arms up, Seliph’s wrapped around Ares’ waist, Ares’ unyielding over Seliph’s shoulders. Ares smelled like dirt and forest and six days of sweat and horse, but also like the velvet of his cloak and of every dream Seliph had had of him since he was sixteen.

Ares tangled his hands in Seliph’s hair, holding him to his chest, closing the air between their bodies until their hearts met and were that one pulse.

For a moment, they swayed there, enrapt within each other. When words became required, Ares asked quietly, “Were you worried?”

“For your safety?” Seliph replied. “Of course. But I also never doubted you for a moment.”

Ares smiled grimly. “I told you. I won’t be dying for you. Not under any circumstances.”

Seliph didn’t say anything for a moment, simply allowing himself to be held. Ares’ long fingers played along his neck, the whispers of fingers kissing his jaw, his ears, his throat. The touches were lovely and distracting, but they only did so much to soothe the edges of Seliph’s caution. Life had taught him to never take anything for granted, but Seliph was clumsy at getting the things he wanted. And the hands he had opened at last longed to be filled.

He took a deep breath and sighed. “Whatever are we to do?”

Ares’ hands did not stop in his hair, but Seliph caught the way they stilled momentarily. “Is this not your answer?”

“It is. But I want to hear yours as well.”

“You ask the world of me.” He responded wryly.

Seliph removed his face from Ares’ neck in order to meet his gaze. Clear, green as the darkest forest, where Ares’ face bellied nothing they expressed his uncertainty, his hesitance. His adoration.

Seliph raised a hand to his cheek. “I think the world of you. I always have.”

Ares closed his eyes, as if aware of their treachery, but he swallows and when his eyes open again, they are bright.

“Seliph, I… don’t know what to do with myself around you. What I did, it was because I had finally figured out what it was I desired to do. And there is more yet I want.” His expression clearly stated his thoughts on the matter, specifically that this was a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. “And this is all because I have found myself in the unprecedented position of seemingly having fallen in love with you. So, there you are. Your answer.”

Seliph hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath until he is done. Ares played with a strand of his hair, eyes cast downward as if his confession had fallen between them, regarding it like it was a strange creature he was unsure would survive outside of his mouth.

Equal parts sorrow and elation, Seliph knows in his heart that this was everything Ares could give him now. His profession of love, pain and desire, the power it gives Seliph to be able to hurt him like this, he wants to cherish the words but also rewrite them into whatever language he must in order for Ares to be able to understand love was not punishment.

What language would that be, so powerful it could teach him that? They were still learning each other in this space between friendship and more, but he was learning more as they stood there in the quiet, keeping themselves like oaths close to the other’s heart. What language did Ares know better than any other?

So Seliph took his face within his hands and knowing now that Ares had also been searching for a way, he asked the question he had longed to for years and had always feared to because he had never known what the answer would be until now.

“Ares, may I kiss you?”

He smiled, small and wry and raw. “Must you even ask?”

Seliph wasted not a single breath more as he closed the distance between them and kissed Ares. The first kiss melted into the second, the third, more and more, soft and tentative, cruel and kind.

There was more to learn and more to be taught, but they would do it together, two hands to support one another.


	3. A Storm Not Contained to the Sky (Rated: T)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt/Headcanon: Seliph loves the rain. Ares does not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dedicate this chapter to my friend Pilly, who was the one who gave me this idea one day when I was screaming about headcanons I had about these two. So, thanks Pilly, you fucking heathen, for letting me yell about art and stuff, you’re a hella rad person and I wanted to write you something good, but good is the operative word so I hope you like this dumb ass excuse to write some anime thirst. This was supposed to be funny and cute, but it got angsty too, sorry about that honey but you know how I operate. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Prompt/Headcanon: Seliph loves the rain. Ares does not.
> 
> P.S. Pilly has an art blog on tumblr @pillyart, it’s really nice 10/10 would recommend you should check it out.

“This was a horrible idea.”

Seliph shifted the bag he was holding to brace upon his hip, smile appeasing- if not a bit too much so. “I’m sorry. I was certain the it would miss us if we left early enough.”

Ares clicked his tongue, and if ever a noise could have been described as the physical manifestation of spite, it would have been that one. “Well, clearly it did not.”

Seliph only hummed in response.

And the rain continued to pour down without a care in the world.

A short trip to a nearby town for a handful of supplies had been the proposition with which Seliph had approached Ares earlier that morning. He had accepted the request to accompany him with a huff and beleaguered sigh, the promise of a good swordsmith a sound justification for the journey, though Seliph’s company and gratitude were the true preferred currency for which Ares’ services would be rendered in. He was positive Seliph saw through the ruse, but the boy would never call him out on it and Ares would never admit to anything even upon the pain of death, faithful to his commitment of wrapping himself in denial with the intent to wear it like a cloak for the rest of eternity.

The town had been quaint but surprisingly well-stocked and varied in wares, and even with as tightly reigned in as Ares kept himself, he’d had a very pleasant time browsing the markets with Seliph. He’d even gotten a chance to show off his masterful bargaining skills when a satchel had caught the prince’s eye and the seller was playing particularly surly. A few minutes of cutthroat haggling and one well-placed glower later, they’d strode off with satchel in-hand, sold twenty gold below the selling price and with a detachable pocket thrown in for free. Seliph had been positively gleaming. Ares was sure the Miracle at Darna hadn’t been half as incredible of a sight.

But as they’d made to leave the sky had darkened into a greyscale of clouds, looming and circling like carrion birds until the deluge had suddenly broken free, the world plunging into the thick, pounding madness of summer rain. They’d only barely gotten off the road and ducked under the small rocky outcropping of where they now stood before the rain had begun in earnest, but that hadn’t saved them from getting soaked.

Ares shook himself off, black cloak heavy with water and smeared with mud, feeling supremely unfortunate. The thrash of the rain was percussive, ringing in his ears, and the air was humid with the kind of cold that stuck to one’s bones. The world beyond their cover had smeared into a watercolor canvas of vibrant greens and liquid greys, blue sky murky with the storm. Thunder drummed from beyond the clouds, foretelling lightning’s arrival.

He cast a hand through his hair, shaking loose the shaggy layers from where they had become plastered to his face. He wondered briefly on the state of their purchases. Had they become waterlogged as well? None of it really mattered to him other than Seliph’s satchel.

Seeking confirmation, Ares glanced to the prince beside him, and his heart shuddered to a stop. Goosebumps raced up his skin from under his wet clothing, but they weren’t from the cold.

This year the temperate spring had melded into a pleasant summer, but the prolonged exposure to the sun earlier in the season had thoroughly scorched Seliph’s moon pale complexion into submission. However, almost like a gift given in return for the prince’s faithfulness to the light, his skin now bore the golden sheen of the sun-kissed desert. The contrast it struck with his cobalt hair was like the sky’s divide at sunrise, so dark it appeared almost black against his tanned skin drenched as it was, the whorls and curls that stuck themselves lovingly to his fine features and graced his swan-like neck tracing tracks dripped by the water from his locks. His long lashes fluttered as they blinked rain from his eyes, drops falling like tears down his pink cheeks, though there was nothing remotely discontented in the gentle smile that filled Seliph’s face as he watched the rain fall with a wonderous expression.

The squall seemed a million miles away with the visage of Seliph’s skin, dewy with rain, and the cascades of dripping hair forming to his neck before him. A sunrise in the desert, a sunbeam through the storm.

But then Ares must physically stop himself from looking because the alternative he would quite literally rather die than get caught doing.

“We should have taken Caeda. But you insisted on walking.”

Seliph tucked a dripping strand of hair behind his ear. “It was a lovely day. And the town was only a short while away.” His eyes cut to Ares with a grin and he teased, “Truly, does it strain you so to indulge me in some time with my friend?”

Truly, it did. But Ares would never put words as to why.

“That’s not the point.” He snapped. Seliph’s smile only widened. “The issue here is that we are stuck out here in the rain.”

Seliph fingered the edge of his tunic, wringing water from the band. “It’s just water.” When Ares neglected to respond in favor of a hateful glare and crossed arms, Seliph’s expression turned contemplative. “I take it you are not a fan then?”

“I despise it. Have you ever tried riding a horse in the rain? It’s the only thing worse than walking in the rain.”

The prince hummed. “I don’t mind the rain. I rather enjoy it.”

Of course, he would. Seliph, who could find the best in anything, any situation, and anyone. Ares wanted to throw something. He would have had something to throw if Seliph hadn’t insisted on carrying all their purchases himself.

Because that was just how Seliph was. Relentlessly optimistic. Unfailingly kind. Stubborn as hell.

A combination of traits that had historically been the bane of Ares’ existence. And the ones that he had never seemed to be able to avoid.

Lene perhaps had been the best example of that. Unexpected, all consuming, she was the perfect natural disaster of everything he could have ever loved or hated about in a person; the kindness, the persistence, the optimism, the fury, her own darkness a compliment to his and her passion the condition that would shorten both of their lives. Hotheaded, there was no compromise with her. This trait they shared, and it had been the reason and the cause for many an argument and the fluid status of their relationship in the years since they’d met.

Falling in and out of love with Lene had been as natural as breathing, the cycles of it the rhythm to which she danced to and the spirals he threw himself in.

But even before their last breakup, the fissures had been there, the covert glances and the quiet nights and the idle thoughts that had no greater purpose other than to damn Ares for all eternity.

Hell need not be made of fire, not when it just as easily subsisted in the confines of a man’s mind once he’s forsaken all his beliefs and found himself in the inconceivable position of having fallen for the enemy.

Seliph had enraptured Ares completely. From their first moments when all Ares had desired was to plunge Mystletain into his chest, to now, simply standing beside him, caught in the rain and getting caught up in his own thoughts, Seliph had integrated into him and became a central part of his life- the subject to which his thoughts flocked to without meaning, like birds tentative to land in any one place lest they stop there, preferring rather to flit about and cause such a raucous there was no amount of drink that could quiet their feathers and no conclusion that could be drawn that didn’t have Ares ready to point his sword at his own chest rather than admit what this feeling was. 

The feeling that stalked him relentlessly, a shapeless desire lurking in the dark corners Ares used to find solace in, the thoughts he shoved and begged to go away after he’d found release only to find them still there, waiting to prey on his weakness again.

Some truths were too big to live with every day. And others men were just meant to take to their graves.

Seliph sighed. “At least Caeda is back safe at camp. If riding through the rain is as horrible as you say, perhaps it’s best she stayed behind.” Ares could feel the way he looked at him, and though he didn’t turn to see, he knew what expression Seliph wore. “I would have never forgiven myself if she got hurt because of me.”

The greatest -and harshest- truth: that past the false façade of detachment and unwrapped from its layers of denial, Ares knew that Seliph knew how he felt.

That each look, each smile, each conversation meant something more to Ares than he could ever put words to.

What Seliph was doing with this information, Ares didn’t have a clue, not that it really mattered, anyways. He was just ashamed he hadn’t been better at hiding it.

How he loathed it, when he allowed himself reprieve from denial long enough to fully examine the things he felt for Seliph, and how he loathed himself when nothing but guilt awaited afterwards. Dogged by years of hatred and fed blatant lies, how these twisted emotions could ever have hoped to bloom was a disrespect to them both. Seliph had offered him friendship, and though as maddening as every little touch and compliment and smile may have been, Ares could not and would not see it as anything beyond that.

Even when he knew he could never see Seliph as a friend. Not with unfriendly things he wanted from him.

Hell need not be made of fire.

“Are we to just wait out the rain, then?” Ares lifted his face to the sky, scowling at the clouds as if like the seller they could have been intimidated into giving him his way. They declined. “I don’t see how there is much else we can do.”

Seliph rubbed his neck with the hand not holding the bag, mussing his soaked fair into even further degrees of disarray and dishevelry that it conjured images of activities in which that damp hair would be stuck to his skin for other, enticing reasons.

But if Ares’ life goes according to plan he will never have to be in a situation when such images are thought of ever again.

“Well…” Seliph drew out the word.

Switching the bag from one arm to another, he set down their supplies. Then squaring his shoulders, he took a deep breath and, with nary a pause, stepped out into the rain.

Ares gaped at him as the prince’s blue shape strode confidently out into the storm. “What are you doing? Seliph, are you mad-“

Heedless, Seliph took several steps out further into the downpour and paused. Then, as sudden as his exit from under the outcropping, he spun on heel, flashing Ares a smile as he spread his arms out, hair spinning out like a fan, cloak swirling about him and he was-

He was playing in the rain.

Twirling, he went around once, twice, storming puddles and breaking the sheets of rain as he whirled in the deluge. Stumbling out from his spiral, he took a running leap and landed in another puddle, sending waves of mud and water over his white boots. He turned and leapt again, hopping from puddle to puddle, arms out, hair flying every which way, joyously thrashing through the rain.

Ares eyes traced every single one of his movements, jaw unhinged as the normally reserved prince flung himself left and right, kicking rocks and sliding across the mud. Through the numerous (and more frequent than what was admittedly acceptable) times Ares had observed Seliph, he had come to realize that though the prince had astonishing grace and precision enviable on the battlefield, removed from the clash of weapons and the threat of defeat, Seliph was a clumsy creature made up almost entirely of elbows and knees and completely without a hint of self-awareness to tell him what a ridiculous and charming thing this was.

Watching him throw himself about, knees falling to the mud when he lost his balance, body bent to feel the rain, grin all encapsulating, it was all Ares would lament on.

“This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous.”

Seliph met his gaze, blue eyes disarming Ares as he blinked water from them. Then in one swift motion, Seliph had stood and pulled his cloak from his shoulders and was launching it right at Ares’ chest in a swift and sodden ball.

“ _Oof!_ ”

It smashed into him with the force of a cart of bricks, the lilting song of Seliph’s laughter following suit, and Ares nearly crumbled under their gravity. He managed to catch the cloak before it fell to the mud, clutching at the fabric madly as anger flared up.

 _Ridiculous. Madness._ What had Ares done to deserve this test of will and patience? He gripped Seliph’s cloak, suddenly fighting the urge to tear it in half. He wanted to take it and throw it back at the prince dancing in the rain. He wanted to put it in his tent and keep it forever. The worst thing he wanted to do was put it back on Seliph, to keep him from catching a cold.

_This was hell._

At some point while Ares had stood there seething, Seliph had stopped his stomping, and now was just standing in the downpour, face lifted to the sky, eyes closed as the water ran down his face. Utterly drenched as he now was, his gargantuan blue tunic (several sizes too big and clearly not meant for one of Seliph’s stature originally) had become weighted down in the rain, heavy form sticking to Seliph’s rail thin frame. The silhouette it formed traced the prince’s slender figure, his broad shoulders, drooping collar bearing his tan skin to the rain and all the world. And then lower beyond that, a stripe of skin along his sternum, still pale from where the sun had not bronzed it. Seliph didn’t seem to care about his exposure, eyes still blissfully closed to the rain, and Ares felt the even more pressing need to cover him, to shield the white skin so private the sun had never seen it, for why should Ares get to see such skin when light itself did not?

And then Seliph’s eyes were open, staring at him.

His gaze -even misaimed, even clouded by battle or laughter or rain- was the sort of thing that shot through someone right to their core. And Ares knew, he knew Seliph saw everything he wanted to hide and never had been able to.

Seliph cocked him head, almost studying him. He then lifted a hand, and it took Ares a moment too long to realize he was beckoning him to come join him.

“No.” Ares shook his head with a vehemence. Whatever god that willed this test, he would drive himself through this storm. Yet Seliph continued to wave at him, and Ares continued to wave him away with the hand not holding Seliph’s cloak to his chest. “Absolutely not!”

But Seliph was nothing but determined, raising both hands to summon him forth, fingers curling, expression light with joy. There was no sun to shine on him, but even with the sky dark and world gone grey, there was something about Seliph the glowed despite it all. The dark did not dim him and grey did not drain him and the rain could but make him seem lighter with the happiness it brought him.

Hell need not be made of fire, for this was hell, and Ares burned all the same.

“Fine! For the love of the gods, fine.” He snarled. “You made me do this.”

He swooped down to scoop up the bag of their purchases, and, taking a deep breath to steel himself for the rush, Ares darted out from under his protection and into the downpour. Immediately, he was soaked, seemingly to his bones, water filling his senses and coursing down his body.

The chill of the rain clashed immediately with the latent warmth of the afternoon, drenching him in chills and shivers but also with the need to shed his clothing lest he melt. The need was so pervasive, he couldn’t keep himself from tearing off his heavy cloak as he approached Seliph, ripping it over his head and baring the rest of his body to the shocking heat of the rain. The water seeped into his shirt, uncomfortably flattening to his frame, hair matted as it coursed with water that got in his eyes.

It was ridiculous, but there was freedom in this release, baring his own skin to this tempest. He had always lamented it, letting go, but at the same time craved the liberty of breaking free from his own head. Truly, this was the kind of storm that was not contained to the sky, and Ares was practically part of it at this point, dripping wet and burning, angry and open, hopeless, always so hopeless to deny himself what he should.

He stumbled up to Seliph, cloaks bundled under one arm around their bag of supplies -all of which he had nearly dropped several times in his sprint- and stood hunched to the rain before him. His eyes raked the prince, teeth curled in a simile of a smile, breath staggered and wrenched from his being and it felt like liberation.

“Happy?” He demanded.

For a moment, only a brief breath that stole Ares’ own, the question seemed to still Seliph entirely. He but watched Ares as Ares watched him back in that infinitesimal moment, but then it was over, and he was smiling again as he laughed and took a step back.

Then, to Ares’ eternal if not purposeful damnation, Seliph stripped himself of his large tunic, baring the thin white undershirt beneath. It too was all but suctioned to his skin, the flimsy white fabric hiding none of what his normal nunnish attire did, transparent across his chest and clinging to every elegant curve of his waist and hips, and then Ares had to stop looking yet again lest death become the more favorable option to the tension currently pooling in his gut.

Mercifully, Seliph tied the sleeves of his tunic around his waist, freeing his arms and blocking his hips from view. “See, it’s not so horrible. It’s actually quite refreshing.”

But by the knowing smile on his lips, there was no doubt in Ares’ mind that Seliph wasn’t doing this on purpose.

“Are we going back or not? Surely you did not intend to play out here for the deration of the storm.”

“Perhaps.” Seliph grinned, and Ares knew if he asked, he wouldn’t refuse him. But then Seliph was tightening his ponytail with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I’ll race you back to camp. Surely we’ll get there quicker if we run.”

“I swear to the gods Seliph, you will drive me to unspeakable things.” Ares ground out with a truly despairing amount of surrender.

Bewilderingly out of context, Seliph simply smiled and replied, “I trust you.” Then, with a flick of his hair, he turned and began sloshing towards the road. “Shall we?”

Running a hand through his hair in one last act of defeat, Ares found himself smiling just the same. “We shall.”

Coming up beside Seliph, he hunched himself to match the prince’s stance. The rain still fell in steady sheets, lightning splitting the sky in bright fragments lighting their path forth. Seliph cast one more glance at him before his eyes were fixed on the road before them.

“Ready… set…”

And then before Ares could blink, Seliph was off, kicking up water and mud and sprinting away.

“Seliph! You- filthy cheater!”

Seliph peered back at him over his shoulder, eyes electric reflecting the lightning. “Come! I’m not waiting for you!”

The world seemed to shake with Seliph’s laughter as he sped off, leaving Ares to run after him, suddenly dizzy with giddiness.

What had Ares been waiting for? For this to go away? To weather this self-inflicted storm as punishment?

Forcing through the haze, Ares knew he wouldn’t be left behind. Finding his center, he charged after him, a blue form in a blue world, the rain a willful force tearing the sky apart but somehow bringing Ares closer to Seliph.

With his heart in his throat and thunder ringing in his ears, Ares gave himself to the chase completely.

In a matter of moments, his long stride had caught up to Seliph, and then surged beyond, his own laughter greeting the world a new kind of thunder. And then Seliph was by his side once again, face red with exertion and cold, but he was gleaming and he met strides with Ares perfectly as they battled through puddles and branches and the rain together, a tempest of limbs and laughter, and Ares had never felt freer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (not pictured, they both catch a horrible cold and are bedridden together for four days afterwards.)
> 
> Fuck how have I managed to put one of these out every month since March


	4. they made you a god, i made you weak (Rated: M)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ares hated his affliction. But he couldn’t hate himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what the fuck I can’t be fucking trusted to do anything fucking fuck
> 
> Hi idk why I’m resurrecting this fic only to abandon it for another eternity
> 
> So whoopty-fucking-do, this is dumb and stupid and I dunno why I wanted to write this so badly, I’m just a terrible disaster bisexual and I wanna write my fave disaster bastard being a horrible disaster bisexual too.
> 
> Prompt: Realization, Time

Like most things, it took time, and nothing happened at first. A culmination of days, weeks, months… years for even the first signs to show.

The craving in question he became cognizant to when his thirst for carnal knowledge made itself known in his early teens. When he became a mercenary proper- his fifteenth birthday, and Javarro had dubbed him a man. Gave him his very first black cloak and turned him loose on the world.

By this time, Ares was all but a product of his anger. Revenge was his religion; spite, his sustenance; the Mystletainn his only true ally. And though he guarded it, nearly cherished this anger and the power it gave him, he used any excuse to feel anything else.

Having lived for years surrounded by men of every type- race, age, nationality, morality- Ares had heard and seen his fair share of… everything. Women in bars and on stages, half- or fully-dressed, dancing or drinking or laughing or fucking. Sometimes, rather than wasting money on a room, men would take the women back to camp. They were never allowed to stay, but in their brief occupancy, there was much seen and heard and even more talk about it afterwards.

As a changing body reveals new things about itself to its owner, Ares grew curious about these things too. But years around men didn’t just learn him in the ways of men and women. It also provided for ample examples of other things Ares would learn his body responded to; the wide breath of shoulders, the strength of a back, the broad hardness of a man’s chest.

While at the same time, the features of the fairer sex never wavered on him. The softness of breasts, the span of hips, the deep heat of womanhood that awaited between them.

These desires bled together, equivalent, indistinguishable from the other. The way he felt extended to in either direction, aimless save for the traits that would draw him to a specific person anyway.

A girl with long legs. A man with nice eyes. A woman who was clever, a boy who was brave.

Devout to his worship of wrath he may have been, in his curiosity to understand and perhaps rationalize the things he was feeling, Ares did foray into the accounts of The Twelve Crusaders. In all the holy books and scripture he came across, about or penned by The Twelve, hardly any mentions of such things were found. Virtues, tales of valor or piety, dragons and dark emperors and generations of war and love- nothing on the way a man might feel and desire another man the way he also felt and desired for women, nothing that could have told Ares what he was feeling was fine and not an abomination or even that anyone else had ever felt the way he did.

The common denominator in all the literature he read: the importance of passing on holy blood, to honor the crusaders, and keep their lines alive and strong.

Ares tried not to think about that too much.

Years came and went like this. Years of black fabric and blood money, hunting shadows that wouldn’t give him what he wanted. A hate simmering below the surface, and all the ways Ares filled his time waiting for it to boil over.

Ares’ birthdays hardly mattered past the fifteenth one; he was a man, capable of his own choices and bearing his own consequences.

Though in truth, Ares had told no one of his birthday- save Javarro. When he was ten, and the spring that year had been a deathly cold so similar to the year his mother had passed, he’d told Javarro of it in a fit of loneliness and self-pity. He’d always assumed the man would forget. He never did.

Sixteen, seventeen. eighteen, these ages flew by and a trend forged itself; Javarro would smuggle a gift into Ares’ possession, claim ignorance but always give him a hardy nameday’s well wishes.

And then, in the eternal cycle of defiance and hubris and shame that was his teenage years, Ares would disappear for a day or three to drink and gamble and fight and fuck himself into oblivion of another year well fed but unfulfilled, after which he would drag his corpse back to the mercenary camp himself or be scooped up from whatever bed, stable, or jail cell he’d happened to populate the night before by Javarro himself.

He was seventeen- his second personal new year’s pilgrimage of gluttony and avarice- the first time Javarro had come to collect him and found him in another man’s bed.

The well-practiced routine of a raucous round of drinking followed by picking a fight with any willing participant had taken an unexpected turn: the bested man had wanted to go another round, but in a different arena. And Ares, drunk off his youth and out of his mind, finally acquiesced to the damning desire he had felt clawing at his insides for years but fully sober would never have forgiven himself for.

In the way bodies know the things they know and want the things they want, Ares too knew what this was and knew that he wanted _this_ , he’d _wanted this_ , that he knew nothing but need and want, but that maybe at the end he would finally understand something about himself he’d never wanted or known what to do with because he lived his life for revenge and _this_ had no place in that, he couldn’t- _wouldn’t_ \- deal with this too because it was far too much and in his greatest shame, he realized someone who lived his life fighting _couldn’t fight_ _everything._

And then in the morning, before Ares could come to his senses and escape without anyone the wiser, Javarro had opened the door.

Laid in the light carding through the open window, there was no mistaking what the scene was. Twisted sheets and discarded boots, two bodies- one pale and the other bronzed by a desert sun- bare-chested and matching; swords set aside, and black, all the black Ares wore to separate himself from the world, tossed away. His beloved cloak abandoned in a puddle of velvet and fur just inside the doorway.

And while Ares’ heart had thudded to the floor, all the Javarro had done was throw his discarded cloak at him, the tidbit that the company was leaving in twenty minutes if Ares was so inclined to join them tossed over his shoulder almost like a second thought as he’d walked out.

Ares had fled not a moment after, half-dressed and never acknowledging his partner or what they’d done (though he would dream of him again).

He left with Javarro’s band twenty minutes later, head soaked from being dunked in a bucket of water, but chin held high, jaw set and braced. He waited for the words to come. Javarro never said anything.

Javarro never said anything, and Javarro never forgot his birthday.

And as eighteen and nineteen came to pass, the beds of men and women Ares turned up in became of near equal. But, oh, he hated himself for every drunken mistake, for every weakness he gave into, the bodies he touched that were shaped like his own and the way he couldn’t stop enjoying it.

As with most things in life, Ares realized, scripture had taught him nothing, but experience taught him _plenty._ There were people who felt the things he felt and wanted the things we wanted.

And there where people that thought that acts that would bear no children, and therefor pass on no holy blood, were amoral- taboo, unnatural.

But as he had that first morning after, as he had done for most of his life, Ares held his head high. Where others caved, when others would grieve or crumble in disgrace, in his eternal defiance to live when the world would see him dead, Ares never let the words or the wills of others effect the way he acted. His hatred was a privilege few could earn.

And for all the shame this weakness caused him, Ares refused to hate himself over it. He could hate things about himself, hate the choices he made, but the day he truly began to hate _himself_ would be the day he truly lost.

_You can’t fight everything._

Ares hated his affliction. But he couldn’t hate himself.

But in this clarity, other problems arose- and without the fog of denial, the truth had become an uncomfortably pellucid thing.

A truth: it is a horrible weakness indeed to wish for someone to feel for you as you feel for them. To want them to want you in the way you want them when there is no chance that they could. Another: that in wishing these things, you were wanting them to suffer the same as you had.

It was a horrible, spiteful, hateful thing to wish this affliction on anyone. To want to condemn someone to this fate, how twisted, amoral, unnatural would- _could_ \- such a thing be.

And these truths cut, like shards of a mirror, deeper and deeper the more one looks into themselves, reflecting a reality sharper than most would want to handle.

But Ares still wanted. The gods in his blood, his body, wanted. Years since his first fall, since his first taste of weakness, he still needed.

And he’s sure Seliph knows.

Seliph knows how he feels, knows the dark things he wants. Ares can only hide it for so long, can only hide it so well. He won’t say anything about it. But even with those knowing blue eyes, neither will Seliph.

He just looks at Ares, in the lowlight of a campfire or leaning too close to read something over Ares’ shoulder, he smiles at him with that sad expression, _I am sorry I made you weak._

When he points a sword at him, encourages Ares to swing back, tells him to work through this anger, his regret, to worship his wrathful gods for the last time, _I am sorry I made you weak._

When he throws himself in harm’s way for Ares, for everyone, over anything, because of everything, when the gods of his own blood taste the wind and dirt, _I am sorry._

When he stands there, looking at him like his own greatest regret. When he reaches out but stops just shy of Ares’ shoulder, pulling back, and the light shatters. Expression conflicted, smile mournful, _I made you weak._

And, _Hezul help him,_ when Ares gives in, when he reaches out, mourning the last uncertain twilight and kisses him, he knows, _I am weak._

But when Seliph smiles and when Seliph fights, and when Seliph _responds_ , Ares feels it is not weakness that commands him.

He chooses this- he chooses Seliph. He chooses Seliph over shame and rationality and disgust and fear, and though he never chose to feel this way, to want these things, he ultimately chose to nurture this. He chose to act. He chose this- he chose Seliph.

And this choice is strength. Mistakes and regrets are what made him weak- and this is the truth, the same truth in his blood, his body, the mirror he refused to look at until it cut him and he bled out the holiness that made him feel wrong, feel weak.

_You can’t fight everything._

Ares wouldn’t fight himself any longer.


End file.
